Quote of the Day

"We are Catholics. We are Americans. We are proud to be both, grateful for the gift of faith which is ours as Christian disciples, and grateful for the gift of liberty which is ours as American citizens."

--United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty: A Statement on Religious Liberty", 2012

My Message to Congress About Syria

Below is the text of an email message I just sent to my elected representatives (drafted by the USCCB) urging them to vote against President Obama's proposed war with Syria. The opening and closing paragraphs are the bishops'; the middle paragraph is mine. To send a similar message yourself, click here.

September 5, 2013

Dear Representative Goodlatte:

Dear Senator Kaine:

Dear Senator Warner:

As Congress debates a resolution authorizing military force in Syria, I urge you instead to support U.S. leadership for peace. Both the Holy See and Conference of Bishops have condemned the chemical attack, but remain convinced that only dialogue can save lives and bring about peace in Syria. In a recent letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Bishop Richard E. Pates, Chairman of the U.S. Bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, wrote: "'[T]he path of dialogue and negotiation between all components of Syrian society, with the support of the international community, is the only option to put an end to the conflict..' We ask the United States to work with other governments to obtain a ceasefire, initiate serious negotiations, provide impartial and neutral humanitarian assistance, and encourage building an inclusive society in Syria that protects the rights of all its citizens, including Christians and other minorities."

Please don't drag our country into an unnecessary, unjustified, and dangerous war with Syria. The consequences of such a military intervention would be horrific. An armed conflict between the U.S. and Syria would not serve the best interests of either nation. I strongly urge you to reject President Obama's phony arguments for engaging our military in Syria and to vote AGAINST any authorization for the use of military force. Please say NO to war and YES to peace, for the good of everyone involved. I will be closely monitoring your action on this issue and will keep it in mind as we head toward the Congressional elections next year.

Thank you for your consideration of this urgent request for U.S. leadership for peace in Syria. Instead of authorizing the use of military force, Syrians need assistance from the United States and the international community to achieve an immediate ceasefire, to initiate serious and inclusive negotiations, and to provide impartial humanitarian assistance to all Syrians in need.

Sincerely,


Justin Soutar

Prayer for Religious Liberty

O GOD OUR CREATOR,
from your provident hand we have received
our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You have called us as your people and given us
the right and the duty to worship you, the only true God,
and your Son, Jesus Christ.
Through the power and working of your Holy Spirit,
you call us to live out our faith in the midst of the world,
bringing the light and the saving truth of the Gospel
to every corner of society.

We ask you to bless us
in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty.
Give us the strength of mind and heart
to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened;
give us courage in making our voices heard
on behalf of the rights of your Church
and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.

Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father,
a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters
gathered in your Church
in this decisive hour in the history of our nation,
so that, with every trial withstood
and every danger overcome—
for the sake of our children, our grandchildren,
and all who come after us—
this great land will always be “one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.



Copyright © 2012, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. All rights reserved.

What's Wrong with the HHS Mandate?

by Justin Soutar

(Originally published on Intellectual Conservative 4/17/13 at http://intellectualconservative.com/index.php/what-s-wrong-with-the )


On January 20, 2012, under the direction of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an unprecedented new law: As of August 1, 2012, all forms of health insurance coverage provided by businesses to their employees and by not-for-profit organizations to their clients would have to include artificial contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs. This official announcement aroused an immediate and fierce storm of protest throughout the United States. Catholic bishops, Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, hospital owners, charity CEOs, heads of colleges and universities, big and small business owners, state and federal government leaders, and ordinary American citizens all declared in no uncertain terms that they could not possibly comply with such a directive. The reason? It would force them to act in violation of their religious beliefs and moral convictions—and they were not about to blithely discard those sacrosanct tenets.

In response to this massive wave of protest, a few weeks later on February 10, 2012 the HHS announced a “compromise” to its sweeping mandate, in which two “exemptions” were handed to religious believers. First, “houses of worship” (i.e. churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) would be exempted from the new law. Second, religious institutions that only hire and serve members of their own faith would not be compelled to furnish certain health care items if furnishing such items violated the principles of their religion. However, this “compromise” did little to abate the storm of protest against the new federal contraceptive, sterilization and abortifacient law. The Catholic bishops objected that it failed to adequately address the serious religious liberty issues raised by the HHS mandate. How so? Well, the second exemption to that mandate is extremely narrow and very few religious organizations qualify for it. Whether schools or hospitals or charities, most religious institutions in America are not exclusivist, hiring and serving only members of their own faith. Rather, most are—as they should be—part of the broader society, and as such they hire staff on the basis of merit and serve people on the basis of need, without discriminating on the basis of religious affiliation. So this HHS “compromise” still left an overwhelming majority of religious institutions legally compelled to act against their beliefs.

A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court completed its review of the encyclopedic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which authorized the Obama administration to issue the healthcare mandate in the first place. On June 28, 2012, the Court ruled that the entire Act is constitutional and that the HHS mandate is simply a legitimate exercise of Congressional power to lay and collect taxes. In his written majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the mandate is not really coercive in violation of the First Amendment because religious entities and business leaders that object to it can choose between obeying the law or paying the tax fines imposed for noncompliance with it. According to Chief Justice Roberts, these fines are not so crippling that they force compliance with the mandate; therefore, the healthcare law leaves religious institutions and business owners still free to act in accord with their beliefs.

This landmark decision was quickly followed by another national wave of public outcry. What was wrong with the ObamaCare ruling? Critics pointed out that, contrary to Roberts’s claim, the tax penalties for noncompliance with the HHS mandate are indeed severely crippling; a religious organization or business that refuses to obey the law will be subjected to fines as high as 15 percent of its annual income or $100 per employee per day. Thus, for a typical institution—be it religious or secular, for-profit or not-for-profit—with dozens or hundreds of employees that refuses to offer contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs in its healthcare plan, the tax fines will amount to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year. Fines of these magnitudes will force many religious institutions and businesses across America to shut down. This is precisely why the National Federation of Independent Business took the Obama administration to the U.S. Supreme Court over the PPACA and the mandate—because they are coercive: Businesses are either forced to obey the law or forced to pay unsustainable fines. Furthermore, fines by their very nature are meant to ensure compliance with a law and to deter and punish noncompliance with it. The notion that the healthcare mandate is not coercive is total nonsense. By allowing ObamaCare to stand unchallenged, the Supreme Court left the First Amendment rights of religious institutions and business owners still exposed to the full onslaught of the HHS mandate.

Facing a barrage of more than forty lawsuits in federal courts across the nation—eleven of which had already been decided in favor of the plaintiffs at this writing—the Department of Health and Human Services held out its most recent olive branch to the American public on February 1, 2013, proposing certain “accommodations” to make its controversial healthcare mandate more palatable to the stubbornly religious masses. Although initially the public wasn’t sure what to make of these complex new “accomodations,” Catholic bishops and lawyers were soon sounding the alarm that the newly proposed HHS regulations do little if anything to allay their deep concerns about the mandate’s violation of religious freedom. In an op-ed entitled “Making Sense of Another Ambiguous ‘Compromise,’” Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia warned that the healthcare mandate “remains unnecessary, coercive and gravely flawed.” On EWTN’s news program The World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo, attorney Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty flatly dismissed the new “accommodations” as “window-dressing.” And Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, in an official statement on behalf of all the bishops, declared, “Throughout the past year, we have been assured by the Administration that we will not have to refer, pay for, or negotiate for the mandated coverage. We remain eager for the Administration to fulfill that pledge.”

So what is lacking in this latest “compromise” from HHS? According to Cardinal Dolan, three issues remain unresolved: 1) The federal definition of a religious ministry remains extremely narrow. 2) Nearly all religious institutions are still compelled to fund and facilitate "services" such as contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients. 3) No protection is afforded to the conscience rights of for-profit business owners.

We’ve already discussed how the mandate affects religious institutions. But what about religious owners of secular for-profit businesses as well as of nonreligious charitable organizations who object that the HHS mandate violates their personal religious beliefs? No legal exemption from the mandate is afforded them. Lawyers for the Obama administration maintain that secular businesses must comply with it regardless of their owners’ personal religious objections to handing out artificial contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacients in their healthcare plans. In other words, under the Obama regime it is a crime for a religious person who runs a secular business or not-for-profit organization to do so in line with his or her religious convictions if such convictions prohibit the distribution of abortion pills, contraceptive drugs and/or sterilization procedures. Forcing individual believers to violate their faith is as much an attack on the First Amendment as forcing entire religious institutions to do so.

And what about the conscience rights of that small but significant group of non-religious owners of secular businesses and charitable organizations who object to providing abortifacients on moral rather than religious grounds? Why should they be exempted from the HHS mandate? After all, according to the Obama administration, this healthcare law is driven by “a compelling public interest”: for their own good, the American people must have unrestricted access to abortifacient drugs, birth control pills and sterilization procedures. The answer is that the moral right to refuse to provide abortion-inducing drugs is found in the moral law, also known as the natural law—a set of universal principles of right and wrong which come from God and which are inscribed in the human conscience. This moral law guided the thinking and actions of our nation’s great founders and, together with faith in God according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, served as the framework for our country’s two principal founding documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to ensure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This solemn statement is becoming all the more remarkable as our nation becomes more secularized, rejecting the firm foundations of religion and morality on which it was built. In this text, our nation’s founders acknowledged as self-evident truths that God created all human beings equal in dignity and endowed them with certain “unalienable” rights, i.e., rights that cannot be taken away, and that the role of government is to protect these rights. The founders knew that the moral law requires respect for the right to life of every innocent human being and forbids murder. They also knew that the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is merely a direct external confirmation by God of a law that he had already written in the human heart. Moreover, in acknowledging “Liberty” as an unalienable human right, the founders understood liberty as 1) the freedom to act in accordance with the moral law, and 2) the freedom to practice one’s own religion without government interference. The former aspect—what we refer to today as “freedom of conscience”—was taken for granted by the founders; we refer to the latter aspect as “freedom of religion.”

In our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Having come to this land from Europe, where some theocratic monarchs forced the state religion on their subjects and outlawed the public practice of other religions, our nation’s founders clearly understood that freedom of religion is a fundamental human right that requires legal protection from the opposing threats of single-religion dictatorship and religious persecution. Thus they wisely crafted a law that on the one hand forbids religious compulsion by the government, and on the other hand guarantees the freedom to practice one’s own religion without interference from the government.

The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution protects our unalienable rights to both life and liberty from arbitrary revocation by the government. It states: “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of criminal suspects. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his liberty or land without first being publicly tried and convicted of a crime. Unfortunately, some two hundred years later in the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger deliberately ignored the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, arbitrarily reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause regarding the confinement and execution of criminals to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons. As a result of this infamous decision, over the last forty years nearly 56 million innocent unborn Americans have been deprived of their unalienable right to life, and with it all their other rights as well. A woman’s supposed “right” to an abortion on demand has no authentic legal basis in the Constitution.

The most fundamental of all human rights—the right to life—as well as the rights to moral and religious liberty are explicitly acknowledged in our nation’s founding documents. By compelling individuals and institutions to help women kill their innocent unborn children regardless of moral objection to an intrinsically evil practice, the HHS mandate violates our sacred rights to life and liberty enshrined in the Declaration and the Constitution. Abortion violates the unalienable rights to life and liberty of the innocent unborn human being in its mother’s womb; therefore, it is both murder and tyranny and constitutes a violation of the Declaration and the Fifth Amendment. The HHS mandate violates not only the unalienable rights to life and liberty of the innocent preborn, but also the unalienable right to liberty of the American people, i.e., their freedom to act in accord with the moral law and with their religious beliefs; therefore, it is both murder and tyranny and constitutes a violation of the Declaration, the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.

Abortion is clearly gravely immoral, so the case for refusing to cooperate in it is pretty clear-cut. But would a secular nonprofit or business owner have the right to object to providing artificial contraceptives on strictly moral grounds? The answer is yes, and here’s one good reason: Studies prove that many birth control pills act as de facto abortifacients—instead of preventing the conception of a child altogether, they merely prevent a newly conceived child from implanting in its mother’s uterus, resulting in its abortion. Thus a secular nonprofit or business owner may rightly refuse to provide artificial contraceptives to employees on the ground that this would make him or her complicit in the grave moral evil of abortion.

But even if artificial contraceptives did not behave like abortion-inducing drugs, there would still be another argument for a secular nonprofit or business owner to justify withholding them from his or her employees: The use of artificial contraception by married couples is gravely immoral. Non-Catholics may object that this is exclusively a doctrine of the Catholic Church, not a tenet of the universal moral law. However, it is worth remembering that prior to 1920, every single Christian denomination in the United States taught that the use of artificial contraception by married couples was a gravely immoral practice. In doing so, they rightly stood alongside the Catholic Church in upholding a key truth of the unchanging law of God. The fact that most Christian churches in America no longer teach this, and the fact that most Americans who object to the use of artificial contraception within marriage are now Catholic, does not change the truth of the moral law. It merely demonstrates that only the Catholic Church has continued to faithfully proclaim the truth of the immorality of artificial birth control for use by married couples. If something is immoral it is immoral for everyone of all times, regardless of their religious faith (or lack thereof) and regardless of whether certain churches teach the truth of it or not.

The mission of civil government is to protect the God-given rights of its citizens and to promote the common good of society. Religion and morality are powerful allies in achieving both of these objectives. They are what George Washington referred to as “indispensable supports” of our nation’s liberty, the essential foundations of human society. Atop this foundation of religion and morality, the traditional family is the essential basic unit of human society, the place where new human life is welcomed and nourished and where religious and moral values as well as civic duties are inculcated in the next generation of American citizens. Government has a solemn duty to respect religion, morality and the family and to avoid making any policies that would threaten their wellbeing. A government that dares to attack religion, morality, or the family is attacking the very foundations of human society. The Obama administration has dared to attack all three of these foundations of our republic by issuing a law that violates religious freedom, promotes immorality, and discourages families from welcoming new human life into their midst.

Our nation’s founders prophetically warned that the United States would not long endure without the twin pillars of religion and morality, that is, faith in God and adherence to his moral law. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the rights to life and liberty—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to define their limits and to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is morally wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life or liberty, then human life and liberty will not be respected.

Unfortunately, religion and morality mean nothing to the Obama administration. Its healthcare mandate and other radical policies are grounded in the dangerous philosophy of radical secularism, which is the antithesis of everything our nation’s founders believed and did. The central idea of this philosophy is that human society and politics are better off without God and without the constraints of an unchanging moral law. Unlike today’s radical secularists, those few of our nation’s founders who were nonreligious men were not at all hostile to religion. Benjamin Franklin did not refuse to sign the Declaration of Independence because it mentioned or referred to God in several places. On the contrary, the nonreligious founders warmly supported and encouraged the public exercise of religion, recognizing its key importance to the welfare of the nation. With its outright rejection of religion and moral absolutes, radical secularism is a recipe for national disaster, grimly exemplified in totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China.

Despite the claims of the Obama administration, the HHS mandate has nothing to do with looking after the health of the American public, and it makes no sense whatsoever when viewed from that standpoint. For one thing, with this law the federal government is unnecessarily forcing health insurers to include coverage of an over-the-counter drug that is already inexpensive and widely available. Those who do not object to the use of artificial contraceptives within marriage as immoral can easily purchase them at the nearest drugstore for the price of a small bag of dog food. For another thing, giving women drugs to kill their unborn children is not caring for the health of either mothers or preborn infants, and giving people artificial contraceptives (many of which are de facto abortifacients) and surgical sterilization procedures so that they can’t have children is not health care either. None of these so-called “preventive services for women” are necessary or even beneficial to the health and well-being of American women; on the contrary, they are unnecessary and harmful to both. The negative effects of abortion on the physical, mental and emotional health and well-being of women are now well documented: cancer, pregnancy complications, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, guilt feelings, and suicide. Furthermore, artificial contraceptives have been shown to be harmful to the natural environment; their chemical waste byproducts pollute our nation’s water and soil and end up contaminating our food supply, which also degrades our health. Seen objectively, the HHS order is an irrational and self-destructive national policy of population control: By helping American women to not bear children, it places the future of our entire nation at risk. Leaving aside for the moment all considerations of morality, religious liberty, and constitutionality, these facts alone would render the “healthcare” mandate a grossly irresponsible, foolhardy and unethical decree of the federal government.

So if the HHS mandate is not about health care, what it is about? The answer is: money. The mandate is driven by powerful corporate interests—specifically the abortion, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries—which stand to profit immensely from legally mandated consumption of their products. Unfortunately, these wealthy and influential corporate giants are better represented in Washington, D.C. than the American people themselves are. They have bribed the Obama administration to give them exactly what they want—and they will do whatever it takes to ensure that the “healthcare” law remains firmly in place, no matter how destructive it is to our country.

To summarize: what is wrong with the HHS mandate?

1. It is unpopular. The HHS mandate is being imposed on our nation by Washington bureaucrats in the face of massive and sustained opposition from the American people. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which gives the Obama administration the authority to issue the HHS mandate, was rammed through Congress and signed into law by President Obama despite the vociferous and well-founded objections of a large majority of his constituents that it failed to adequately protect their moral conscience rights and religious freedoms. Polls taken from 2009 up to today have consistently registered two-thirds of Americans as strongly opposed to ObamaCare, which makes it the most controversial and unpopular reform legislation in American history.

2. It is unjust. Never before in U.S. history has the federal government enacted a law that forces people to violate their moral consciences and religious precepts. Such compulsion is unjust because it infringes on the basic human rights to act in accord with the moral law and with one’s religious faith.

3. It is unconstitutional. The HHS mandate violates our First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion as well as the Fifth Amendment rights of unborn and born Americans not to be deprived of life or liberty, respectively, without due process of law.

4. It is immoral. It is one thing and bad enough for a government to legalize a gravely immoral act such as abortion. However, it is another thing and far worse for a government to legally compel its subjects to violate the moral law. No government has the right to order certain people to help other people do gravely immoral things such as murder their preborn children or render themselves infertile. Yet this is exactly what the federal government under the Obama administration is doing with the HHS mandate: forcing American citizens to participate in the gravely immoral acts of abortion, contraception, and sterilization.

5. It is an attack on religion, morality, and the family—the three basic pillars of human society and national life.

6. It is grounded in the dangerous philosophy of radical secularism, the idea that God and the moral law must be expelled from public life.

7. It is unnecessary. Abortion is not health care, and artificial contraceptives are already inexpensive and widely available for those who do not object to their use.

8. It is destructive to the public health. Abortion is harmful to the health of women, and artificial contraceptives generate toxic waste.

9. It is irresponsible. Preventing women en masse from having children is a recipe for national suicide.

10. It is driven by corporate greed. At bottom, the HHS mandate is nothing other than pork barrel for the abortion, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries.

Since announcing this high-handed and unprecedented “healthcare” directive over a year ago, the Obama administration has utterly failed to grant American religious institutions and business owners the basic freedom to act in accordance with their moral convictions and religious beliefs. The two HHS “compromises” presented thus far, with their narrow “exemptions” and dubious “accommodations,” are mere facades, totally devoid of genuine protections for the religious liberties and conscience rights of the American people. They’re carefully calculated political gestures designed to give the appearance of compromise and intended to weaken public resistance to a law that is immoral, unjust, and unconstitutional—a law that President Obama and his tyrannical accomplices have foisted on our nation without our consent, a law that they have no intention of rescinding or of substantially altering to comply with the First and Fifth Amendments.

The HHS mandate has been and continues to be loudly decried as an attack on religious liberty and the First Amendment, which it certainly is. But even more fundamentally, it is an attack on the moral law and on our right to act in accordance with that law. Perhaps, in our response as Catholic American citizens to the Obama administration’s radical anti-life policy, too much emphasis is being placed on the religious liberty and legal aspects of the issue and not enough on the moral and human rights aspects. The core of the issue is that the mandate forces American employers to purchase and distribute to their employees things that are gravely immoral for use either by pregnant women or by married couples. As Catholics, we need to articulate a more coherent defense of the moral law and of our right to act in accordance with it—defending principles that we hold in common with other religious believers as well as with many atheists and agnostics—in order to combat the insidious propaganda of the Obama administration more effectively.

The HHS mandate is an immoral and unjust law; therefore, we the people of the United States have not only the right but the moral duty to refuse to obey it—and to work for its full reversal. It’s not enough to merely demand further exemptions from the mandate; this approach is inherently flawed because it implies tacit acceptance of an unacceptable law. For the reasons given in this article, the so-called “healthcare” mandate in principle is intrinsically, profoundly and irredeemably flawed, and because of that it must be completely overturned. We must not allow ourselves to become discouraged by the obstacles we face in achieving this necessary goal. We must not give in to a subtle defeatist mentality and cowardly surrender to the mandate as though it were somehow irreversible. Such a dangerous and evil law cannot stand for long without wreaking tremendous havoc on our nation. We the people of the United States must keep up the pressure on the Obama administration to revoke this terrible law—and if it refuses to do so, we must use our heads when we next go to vote and select responsible leaders who will protect and defend our God-given unalienable rights to life and liberty, so that we will once again be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”


Copyright © 2013 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

March for Marriage

From the Virginia Catholic Conference:

"Next Tuesday, March 26, 2013, several organizations from across the country will join together to stage a National March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. The March presents a significant opportunity to promote and defend marriage and the good of our nation, to pray for our Supreme Court justices, and to stand in solidarity with people of good will. It also complements a Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage and Religious Liberty announced last November by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Joining the USCCB’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, the Virginia Catholic Conference encourages Catholics to attend and support the March for Marriage.


"The March marks the two days --- March 26 and 27--- when the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases related to so-called same-sex “marriage.” Petitioners are asking the Court to rule on the constitutionality of limiting marriage to a union of a man and a woman. Currently nine jurisdictions, including Maryland and the District of Columbia, have redefined marriage to include same-sex relationships.

"Our own Virginia bishops, in their 2006 pastoral letter on marriage, noted that marriage “is inscribed in our human nature.” Further, the U.S. bishops in 2009 pointed to the Second Vatican Council, which reminded us that “marriage is not a purely human institution’’ but one “established by the creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws.” The unique, fundamental meaning and purpose of this universal institution is to unite a man and a woman with each other and with the children born from their union. In fact, government has long recognized marriage because it is the institution best designed to protect children and their families. Those who want to redefine marriage claim marriage exists to satisfy an emotional need or to support voluntary relationships. However, the institution of marriage is not simply one of many alternative kinds of relationships. Rather, it is the very building block of the family and of society. Because of the unique contributions this institution makes to the common good, it must be clearly distinguished from other relationships.

"In 2006, Virginia voters passed a constitutional amendment to protect marriage and prevent legislators and judges from redefining it. The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision could have a profound impact on marriage laws across the nation and could even put individual and organizational conscience rights in jeopardy.

"To learn more about what the Church teaches about marriage, see the USCCB site as well as Marriage: Unique for a Reason.

"The Virginia Catholic Conference encourages all those who are able to attend the March for Marriage on March 26 and provide public witness as well as prayer on this critical issue."

Great idea. Life, marriage, and religious liberty are under attack in our nation today as never before. We Catholics need to stand up for what we believe and join with other people of goodwill to defend the traditional values on which our nation is built. We have the annual March for Life in Washington, and now there will be a March for Marriage.

Thankfully, our Catholic bishops have been doing a fine job of leading this effort to protect the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, and our religious freedom and moral conscience rights. I think the bishops should go one step further and organize a massive march on Washington for life, marriage, and religious liberty. If it was well organized and well presented, millions of people--Catholic and non-Catholic alike--would attend. This could make an impact similar to that of the civil rights march of 1964: the federal government might actually listen to the people and take meaningful, decisive political action to protect their God-given human rights in response to massive public pressure. Let's hope and pray that this happens in the near future.

The Fortnight for Freedom Has Begun!

In response to current grave threats to religious liberty in America, especially that presented by the Obama administration's unjust contraceptive mandate, our Catholic bishops have declared a Fortnight for Freedom--a national two-week period of prayer, fasting, education, and advocacy in support of religious freedom. It began yesterday, June 21, and will run through July 4, our great national holiday of Independence Day. The event officially began last night at 7 PM Eastern Time with an Opening Mass celebrated at the National Shrine of the Assumption in Baltimore, Maryland, and it will officially end with a Closing Mass celebrated July 4 at 12:10 PM ET at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The latter event will be televised nationally on EWTN. You can find out more about this special event by clicking here and scrolling down to where it says "A Fortnight for Freedom"; the bishops have more good info and resources here as well as at Fortnight4Freedom.org. You can participate in the special activities your local parish is offering, which will vary from parish to parish. You can also sign up to participate in the Virtual Vigil for Religious Liberty that the Catholic Advocate is offering. EWTN is airing special programming throughout this time and has set up a new website devoted entirely to religious liberty, so be sure to check those out as well.

As a younger American Catholic, it's refreshing to see the excellent leadership our bishops are showing on this issue. They have courageously risen up and are standing united to meet this challenge, sounding the alarm and speaking the truth as befits successors of the Apostles and patriotic citizens. They deserve our wholehearted support and thanks, and let's remember to keep them in our prayers too. Their example should encourage us to fulfill our own duties as lay Catholics and citizens to be present and active in the public square in defending the religious freedom and conscience rights of all Americans. In this battle for religious freedom, prayer is our most important weapon, but political activism is essential as well. As Catholics we must pray, and as citizens we must act. Prayer and action have to go together if this effort is to be successful.

I find it significant that the U.S. Supreme Court will be issuing a landmark decision on religious liberty right in the middle of the Fortnight for Freedom. I think Divine Providence has a hand in this. As our justices decide the constitutionality of the sweeping new healthcare legislation underpinning HHS mandate, millions of Catholics across our nation will be praying and fasting for the protection of religious liberty. Prayer and fasting are powerful spiritual weapons that can change the course of history, especially when they are taken advantage of en masse as is happening right now. Let's continue to pray that the Holy Spirit will grant wisdom to our judges and inspire them to make the right decision on the mandate, i.e., to uphold our Constitution and protect our First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

With firm trust in Divine Providence and under the reassuring protection of our Immaculate Mother Mary, Patroness of the United States, let us join together in prayer, fasting, and political action for the restoration and protection of the religious liberty on which America was founded. And let's bear in mind that no matter what happens, we win in the end through the power of Christ's Cross and Resurrection.

I'll close with two religious liberty quotes from America's Founding Fathers. The first is from James Madison, often called the “father” of the U.S. Constitution: "There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation. I can appeal to my uniform conduct on this subject, that I have warmly supported religious freedom.” The second is from Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence: “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.”

Let freedom ring!

On a Very Important Subject

Here's my letter to Steve Neill, Editor of the Catholic Virginian (my diocesan newspaper) regarding the Obama administration's unprecedented attack on the religious freedom of the American people:

May 7, 2012

Dear Editor:

In the article, “Attack on religious liberty said real concern,” which appeared in the April 30 edition of the Catholic Virginian, you stated that “many Catholics have great concern over a perceived attack on religious liberty by the government mandate which would require employers to cover contraceptive services in insurance policies for their employees.” I’m sorry, but this attack is not “perceived”; it is real, and Catholics should indeed be greatly concerned about it. Our Catholic bishops have said as much in their recently issued pastoral letter entitled, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty” (http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm). In this well-written and timely document, the bishops state the following regarding the HHS mandate: “In an unprecedented way, the federal government will both force religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching and purport to define which religious institutions are ‘religious enough’ to merit protection of their religious liberty. These features of the ‘preventive services’ mandate amount to an unjust law.”

The bishops are right to call the mandate “unprecedented” and “unjust.” Never before in American history has the federal government ordered religious institutions to violate their own principles. This is a clear violation of the First Amendment to our Constitution, which forbids Congress from making any law that would prohibit the free exercise of religion. Congress overstepped its bounds by passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, which President Obama signed into law and which requires virtually all employers to include contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs in their health insurance plans. The HHS mandate is simply an affirmation of this new law. Hopefully the Supreme Court, which is currently reviewing the PPACA, will do its duty to rule against the legislation behind the mandate. Recognizing its unconstitutional nature, EWTN, Belmont Abbey College and other Catholic institutions that would be impacted by the mandate have rightly filed lawsuits of their own against the Obama administration to stop it.

Only “houses of worship” and narrowly defined “religious institutions” that serve exclusively members of their own faith are exempted from the HHS mandate. Thus all institutions run by religious believers that serve people regardless of faith—including Catholic orphanages and shelters, schools and universities, hospitals and pharmacies, soup kitchens, and even crisis pregnancy outreach centers—are now forced to provide contraceptive services or referrals for such services. This kind of government compulsion and control of religious entities and of our healthcare system is what one might expect in a Communist country, not in a free nation such as the United States is supposed to be. By attacking religion and denying our conscience rights, the Obama administration has already begun to take our nation down the dark path of totalitarianism.

As American citizens and as Catholics, we cannot afford to simply sit back and allow our most cherished God-given liberty to be swept aside by an unscrupulous and overreaching government with a radically secularist agenda. We must face the reality of what is happening and take action to defend our basic conscience rights and the freedom to publicly practice our religion without government interference—a key freedom on which our nation was founded. Our bishops have called us to prayer, fasting, and political involvement for the restoration of our religious liberty, so that “as Catholics and as Americans we do not have to choose between the two.” Let’s take up the challenge together with courage and perseverance, trusting in God’s help and in the protection of Mary Immaculate, our patroness.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

[signed] Justin Soutar

There was much more I could have said, but I wanted to try to keep this short and to the point.

"Our First, Most Cherished Liberty"

In response to the growing threat to religious freedom in the United States, particularly from (but not only from) the Obama administration, our Catholic bishops have issued a fine comprehensive statement on religious liberty that should be required reading for every American Catholic. It's an eloquently written yet realistic assessment of the dangers being faced not only by Catholics but by all religious believers in the United States. Leaders of other religions have issued similar statements of their own, and many non-Catholics have praised the bishops for taking a strong stand on this vitally important issue.

The document is entitled, "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty."

This is a call to arms.

Read the document.

Roman Missal, Third Edition: Liturgical Renewal as Envisioned by Vatican II

November 27, 2011 will be a historic day for the Roman Catholic Church across the English-speaking world. On that day the United States will join other English-speaking countries in implementing a new translation of the Third Typical Edition of the Missale Romanum (Roman Missal), the official liturgical text for the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. This implementation will mark a watershed in the reform of the Sacred Liturgy that was set in motion by the Second Vatican Council. At the same time, this latest edition of the Roman Missal is part of an organic liturgical development within the 2,000-year history of the universal Church.

In the Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a motu proprio in which he announced a forthcoming Third Edition of the Missale Romanum. Once this became available in 2002, bishops all over the world began a rigorous and time-consuming process of translating it into the vernacular languages used in the liturgy. The task of translation into English was assigned to the International Committee on English in the Liturgy in coordination with the bishops’ conferences of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and other English-speaking countries. Once ICEL completed a draft English translation of the Roman Missal, it was submitted to the bishops’ conferences for review and approval. On June 15, 2006, after lengthy discussion and debate, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved the draft ICEL text of the Roman Missal, while forwarding some minor suggested changes in this text to the Vox Clara Committee (which assists the Vatican with English liturgical translations) and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The Congregation and Vox Clara reviewed the bishops’ suggestions, made some slight changes to the new English text based on them, and then returned it to the bishops for their final approval. On November 20, 2009, the U.S. bishops approved the new English translation of the Missale Romanum, and their approval was confirmed by the Holy See on March 26, 2010. After undergoing a final review and edit by Vatican officials, the English translation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal was officially sanctioned by the Holy See in July 2010. Now the new missals for use at Mass could be printed, and catechesis efforts could be launched to prepare English-speaking Catholics for implementation of the new Roman Missal the following year.

Translating the Liturgy

Since Vatican II, the Church has issued certain norms for the translation of liturgical texts from Latin into the vernacular. In 1969, the Council issued an Instruction titled Comme le Prevoit, which set guidelines for liturgical translators. This document established a guiding principle called “dynamic equivalence,” which involved the translation of basic thoughts rather than words. Translators working on this principle tried to convey the meaning of the original Latin text of the Roman Missal rather than the text itself. The result was a Mass translation into the English vernacular that sounded very modern and was easily understood, but at the price of significantly deviating from the original Latin text. In several subsequent Instructions issued by the Vatican, translation guidelines were adjusted somewhat but the central principle of dynamic equivalence was retained. The 1974 and 1985 English translations of the First and Second Editions of the Missale Romanum, respectively, followed this principle. Scriptural translations for use in the liturgy, such as the 1970 English translation of the New American Bible from Hebrew, were also based on the principle of dynamic equivalence.

In 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued the Church’s fifth Instruction for liturgical translators since the Council. This document, entitled Liturgiam Authenticam, marked a paradigm shift in the translation of liturgical texts, as it replaced dynamic equivalence with a new guiding principle for translators called “formal equivalence.” Formal equivalence involves rendering the Latin text of the Roman Missal as faithfully as possible into the vernacular. Liturgiam Authenticam defines this principle as follows: “While it is permissible to arrange the wording, the syntax and the style in such a way as to prepare a flowing vernacular text suitable to the rhythm of popular prayer, the original text insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses.” (LA, § 20) The result is an accurate and dignified translation of the Mass into English that allows the beauty and grandeur of the original Latin text to shine through. The new English translation of the Missale Romanum, Third Edition, follows this principle of formal equivalence. So do scriptural translations for use in the liturgy, such as the 1998 translation of the New Testament NAB from the traditional Latin Vulgate.

Why has the post-Vatican II Church shifted from one translation principle to another? To answer this question, we must clarify our understanding of the vision for authentic liturgical renewal set forth by the Second Vatican Council. The Third Edition of the Roman Missal, soon to be implemented in thousands of parishes, is more faithful than either of its predecessors to that vision for true renewal. It presents a golden opportunity for us English-speaking Catholics to review and reflect on the reality of what the Mass really is, as well as to deepen our appreciation for the rich liturgical heritage of the Catholic Church’s Latin Rite.

Worship and Liturgy

The Sacred Liturgy, which we call the Mass in the Latin Rite, is our formal public worship of God as Catholics. It’s “the great prayer of the Church” offered with Christ to God the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the Mass, Jesus offers Himself to the Father in atonement for our sins, and his Body and Blood become food for our souls. At the heart of the Sacred Liturgy is the Eucharist, which is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus physically present under the appearances of bread and wine. Thus the Mass is the celebration of the Eucharist and a re-presentation of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross for our salvation two thousand years ago. The word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving,” and in its Eucharistic worship, the Church is always giving thanks to God the Father for our deliverance from sin and our reconciliation to Him through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. The Eucharist is of paramount importance since it is the source, center and summit of the Church’s life according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Thus the matter of how the Mass should be celebrated, called “liturgy,” takes on great importance as well.

How should we worship God? This fundamental human question has rung through the ages. When Adam and Eve sinned and disobeyed God at the beginning of human history, God promised to send a Savior to free human beings from sin and reconcile them to Himself. His grand plan of salvation began in the Old Testament when God chose a people for Himself—the Jewish people. He delivered them from slavery in Egypt; brought them into the Promised Land; and revealed to them how He wanted to be worshiped. He gave Moses careful, detailed instructions for the building and furnishing of the Temple, the vestments to be worn by the priests, the prayers to be recited, and the offering of various animal sacrifices for sin. This instruction manual for Jewish worship comprised a large portion of the latter four Books of Moses (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). The practice of Jewish liturgy according to the Mosaic Law not only gave due honor and glory to God, but it also united the Israelite community and formed the core of their identity as a people. The summit of the Jewish religion was the annual celebration of Passover, when the Israelites converged on Jerusalem to sacrifice and eat the Paschal lamb in joyful remembrance of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

God established the worship rituals of the Old Testament not as permanent and complete in themselves, but as a preparation for the perfect New Testament worship to be offered by His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, the Temple priests would offer animal sacrifices to God in atonement for sin, but these sacrifices were imperfect because they could not take away sin. Jesus, the mediator of the New Testament, is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world by His sacrifice on the Cross. His obedience repairs the damage done by Adam’s sin of disobedience. The summit of our Catholic religion is the celebration of Mass, which is the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. When we attend Mass, we participate in this perfect sacrifice of Christ. Thus our Catholic worship is a natural and logical descendant of Jewish worship.

The early Church spontaneously developed its own basic form of Eucharistic worship based on the Jewish Sabbath liturgy. Over the course of centuries, in the varied soils of the Middle East and Europe, this same liturgical seed grew into slightly different rites watered by theological reflection and increasing awareness of the riches contained in the mystery of the Eucharist. Today there are twenty-one approved rites for the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy within the universal Church, of which the Latin Rite (also called the Roman Rite because the Vatican uses it) is the largest. Although slightly different in their external rituals and ceremonies, all these rites share the same basic form of Eucharistic worship that has remained unchanged through the ages. Saint Justin’s description of the Eucharistic liturgy written in 155 A.D. is remarkably similar to our modern Latin Rite Mass.

In his classic work The Spirit of the Liturgy, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) makes the point that we’re supposed to worship God the way He wants to be worshiped, not the way we want to worship Him. This is because liturgy is not our work but our participation in God’s work of redemption. In the Old Testament, God promised the Israelites that if they obeyed the Ten Commandments, kept the Law of Moses and worshiped Him faithfully according to the divinely prescribed rubrics, He would remain with them and bless them and they would prosper. On the other hand, if they disobeyed the Commandments, disregarded the Law and substituted their own liturgical ideas for the divine ordinances, God would punish them. God kept His promises, and the Jewish people flourished as long as they remained obedient to God. But when they rebelled against God, they incurred His wrath and dreadful punishments.

These same principles apply to Catholics, who are the New Testament people of God. With authority given by Christ Himself, the Church teaches the truth, makes certain laws and sets the rules for New Testament worship. If we believe everything the Church teaches, obey her laws and participate faithfully in the proper celebration of the Eucharist, we will glorify God and be the holy people God is calling us to be. However, if we pick and choose which Church doctrines to believe, ignore Church laws and elevate our personal ideas for worship above the Church’s established liturgical rules, we insult God and risk His just punishment.

Evidently, humility and obedience are essential components of true worship. In fact, the interior dispositions of the heart are even more important than external liturgical practice. In the Old Testament, God made clear that the sacrifice of animals was meaningless without the sacrifice of obedience in the human heart: “More precious than sacrifice is obedience, submission better than the fat of rams!” (RSV, 1 Sam. 15:22) “Sacrifice or oblation you wished not, but ears open to obedience you gave me…Behold, I come to do your will, O God!” (NAB, Psalm 40:7, 9) Obedience, the humble sacrifice of our preferences to God’s Will, is the most perfect form of worship.

When it comes to Catholic worship today, there are those who think they know better than God and the Church. Their concept of liturgy has more in common with the feel-good pop psychology of the sixties than with ancient Jewish and Catholic worship traditions. “Authority” and “tradition” are bad words to them. They treat the Church’s regulations for worship as suggestions and reject its rich 2,000-year liturgical history out of hand in favor of their own innovative worship preferences. Such privately determined “worship” has no place in the Church. It is built on disobedience, the prideful exaltation of human ideas and preferences above God’s Will. In fact, it is the ultimate form of idolatry: the worship of ourselves.

The Language of Catholic Worship

But how did Latin come to be the official language of Catholic worship in the Roman Rite, and why does the Church give it so much importance? To answer these questions, let’s take a brief look at the development of this lingua franca within the Church.

In the early centuries of Christianity, the dominant formative cultural influence on the Church was the Roman Empire, whose official language was Latin. Rome became both the center of the universal Church and the capital of the Western Church. Latin was the universal language of the known world at that time; this, combined with its stable and unchanging nature, led to its adoption as the common language of the Western Church by the fourth century and eventually to its official adoption as the language of the Roman Rite about the year 1030. Saint Jerome translated the ancient Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into Latin near the end of the fourth century, and the resulting “Latin Vulgate” edition became the official Bible of the Western Church for the next 1500 years. Latin became a common bond uniting Catholics across the European continent and a vital element in the development of Western Catholic learning and culture. As the Roman Empire fell apart and barbarians ravaged Europe during the Dark Ages, Saint Benedict founded a chain of monasteries where monks painstakingly hand copied the Latin Bible; preserved Gregorian Chant for the singing of the Mass; and translated great literary works from Latin into the various European languages. These monasteries were little oases of civilization where literature, art, architecture, music, gardening and scientific knowledge were quietly preserved during a hostile time.

When conditions improved, these seeds of culture sprouted, bursting into full flower during the Middle Ages. The Latin Mass was then the focal point of European society and the wellspring of its culture; the best art, architecture and music were produced for the glory of God to enhance Catholic worship. Latin Rite Catholicism was the driving force behind the towering cultural achievements of this era including magnificent Gothic cathedrals, polyphonic chant, Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, the medieval universities, the poetry of Dante, the invention of the printing press, and the discovery of America. Knowledge of Latin remained widespread even as the cultural influence of the Church gradually decreased during the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. The ancient language of the Roman Catholic liturgy has profoundly shaped our modern Western culture; from science and medicine to law and politics and even to our English language, not a single area of life remains untouched by it.

The Latin Mass is our religious inheritance as Latin Rite Catholics and our cultural inheritance as members of Western civilization. Unfortunately, this heritage has been forgotten in the last forty years, to the point where many Catholics are not even familiar with Latin. Moreover, the relationship between liturgy and culture has been reversed: whereas liturgy used to shape culture, now popular culture influences the liturgy. Modern Catholic worship is often adapted to “fit in” with the surrounding pop culture, a culture that has completely broken off from the Church and is often hostile to it. These developments are part of a serious liturgical and cultural crisis that has gripped the Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

Vatican II and Modern Liturgical Reform

Ever since Vatican II, a popular misperception has spread among Catholics as to what the Council intended concerning the Sacred Liturgy and, in a broader sense, concerning the Church herself. The sweeping liturgical and other reforms of the Council were widely misinterpreted as implying a radical change in the nature of the Mass and of the Church. Celebration of the liturgy in Latin, strict adherence to the prescribed rubrics, the concept of the Mass as sacrifice, and the dignity of the priesthood (in the case of the liturgy)—the Church as the Bride of Christ with infallible teaching authority, preserving and handing on the deposit of faith (in the case of the Church)—all of these suddenly became old-fashioned, “pre-Vatican II” ideas and were replaced with an “anything goes” mentality in “the spirit of Vatican II.” The Mass was no longer seen as the Church’s worship offered to God but as a celebration of human togetherness subject to the whims of the local community. Similarly, it was now up to the individual Catholic to believe and live as he pleased regardless of official Church doctrine and laws. Vatican II transformed the Church from a monarchy into a democracy. This unfortunate heresy known as “the spirit of Vatican II” has done catastrophic damage to the faith of millions of Catholics. It has even spawned an opposite myth adhered to by some traditionalist Catholics that the entire Second Vatican Council was heretical and its reforms null and void.

Yet despite these grave misperceptions and their accompanying fallout, there was nothing wrong with the Second Vatican Council. It simply applied traditional Church doctrine to the modern world, introduced reforms into the Church’s liturgy and calendar, and changed certain Church laws, all to help Catholics better live their faith and to enable the Church to effectively evangelize the modern world. The chief problems for the Council’s liturgical reforms have been misinterpretation and incorrect application of its directives by the clergy, and a lack of proper education with resulting misunderstandings by the laity. After the Council, many bishops and priests rushed into the liturgical changes and did a poor job of explaining to the faithful the reasons for those changes. This left lay Catholics unsettled and confused and even led some to abandon the Church altogether because the Mass appeared no longer recognizable. Very few Catholics bothered to read the actual documents of Vatican II, including the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium), although good English translations of these documents were widely available. Moreover, in addition to problems from within the Church, the prevailing spirit of rebellion against authority in 1960s society influenced many Catholics to interpret and embrace Vatican II as a rebellion against traditional Catholicism. Even today many lack a proper understanding of what the Second Vatican Council had in mind for the Church in general and the Eucharistic liturgy in particular.

What did the Second Vatican Council intend—and not intend—with regard to the Church’s liturgy, specifically in the Latin Rite? To answer these questions, we can do nothing better than refer to the Council’s charter document for liturgical reform, Sacrosanctum concilium (in the Vatican’s official English translation). Glancing at the text, we notice immediately that one of the most frequently recurring words in this document is “tradition.” It’s obvious from the opening paragraphs that Vatican II never intended to radically change the Church or do away with liturgical tradition. Paragraph 23 of Sacrosanctum concilium, which sums up the Council’s guidelines for reform of the liturgy, dispels the myth that Vatican II fundamentally redefined the nature of the Mass:

That sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate
progress, careful investigation is always to be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be revised. This investigation should be theological, historical, and pastoral. Also the general laws governing the structure and meaning of the liturgy must be studied in conjunction with the experience derived from recent liturgical reforms and from the indults conceded to various places. Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.

In other words, Vatican II did not erect a massive wall of separation between the pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II Mass. Even after the Council, liturgical tradition was to be given preference to innovation; only necessary changes were to be made in the rubrics; and these innovations must have some connection to preexisting liturgical forms. The paragraph above encapsulates the true spirit of Vatican II: careful, measured reform within the context of sound tradition.

Furthermore, the Council fathers never intended that Latin Rite Catholics lose all touch with their splendid liturgical heritage. Supposedly, Vatican II put the Latin Mass in the Church’s closet and gave official preference to Mass said in the vernacular. Not so. While acknowledging that increased use of the “mother tongue” (the vernacular) in the liturgy “frequently may be of great advantage to the people,” Sacrosanctum concilium stipulated that “the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” (SC, § 36, 1) The document also directed that “steps should be taken so that the faithful may be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.” (SC, § 54) Whether any parts of the Mass at all were to be said in the vernacular, and if so which parts, was to be determined by “the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2,” that is, by the local bishops’ conference. However, it’s important to clarify that Vatican II did not intend to impose on the Church through the bishops a stiff rigidity in this matter. During an interview with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN in 2003, Cardinal Francis Arinze, who was then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said that “there should be flexibility” in the use of the Latin and the vernacular in the liturgy.

Supposedly also, Vatican II did away with Gregorian chant in favor of new, privately composed arrangements of liturgical music in the vernacular. Here again, the Council did no such thing; in fact, it intended that Gregorian chant be retained in the Roman Rite liturgy and that Catholics remain familiar with it. Sacrosanctum concilium states: “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” (SC, § 116) In April 1974, Pope Paul VI issued a booklet for Latin Rite Catholics called Jubilate Deo. This prayer book, which is still in print and includes simple and easy-to-sing chants for the Ordinary parts of the Mass (such as the Kyrie, Gloria and Sanctus), was issued with the stated purpose of promoting “a minimum repertoire of plain chant” among the Catholic faithful.

The intention of Vatican II regarding the liturgy was to encourage “fully conscious and active participation” (SC, § 14) in the Mass for the greater spiritual benefit of the faithful worldwide. To this end, a revised Order of Mass (Novus Ordo) was compiled in Latin that simplified the text and rubrics of the Latin Rite Mass. Moreover, permission was given for the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy in the vernacular languages of the world; for the use of various musical instruments in addition to the traditional pipe organ; for priests to celebrate Mass facing the people if they wished; and for the reception of Holy Communion in the hand. Such extensive advantage has been taken of these permissions that Catholics have come to think of each as being the norm. However, all of these permissions are actually temporary indults, or special privileges granted in exception to permanent Church laws governing the Roman Rite. None of them are mandated or required by Vatican II, and the Church has the authority to extend these indults indefinitely or to revoke any of them at any time.

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy clearly indicates that the purpose of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical reforms was not to jettison liturgical tradition or destroy the sacred character of the Mass but to preserve and hand on the Church’s greatest treasure to the Catholics of the modern world.

The aim of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical reforms was to promote a period of careful and strictly regulated liturgical experimentation to determine what would best help Catholics in the pews participate with their whole being in the Sacred Liturgy. The goal of the Novus Ordo and of the indults was not to diminish the sacred character of the Mass, to eliminate the use of Latin from it, or to make it plainer and more acceptable to contemporary social tastes. Unfortunately, these unintended consequences of Vatican II have become commonplace in the decades since the Council. As a result, millions of Catholics are now accustomed to an informal, casual style of worship exclusively in the vernacular that diminishes the sacredness of the Mass and makes them feel more comfortable. Some don’t like the upcoming changes in the Roman Missal, which they see as amounting to a repudiation of Vatican II and as discouraging active lay participation in the liturgy. Such misperceptions arise from a lack of proper education and understanding of what the new Roman Missal is all about, and more fundamentally, of what Vatican II was all about. Unfortunately, the somewhat inferior English Mass translation that has been in use for the last forty years has only reinforced these misperceptions.

Prior to Vatican II, the average Catholic never thought of complaining about the way Mass was celebrated; he simply accepted it the way it was in obedience to the Church. Now, however, many Catholics claim the right to have a say in how Mass is said. This stems from one of the biggest myths about Vatican II: that the Council authorized lay Catholic liturgists to manipulate the liturgy according to their own private whims and fancies. But Vatican II never gave laypeople authority to decide how the Mass is celebrated. It’s up to the Church—specifically, to the Pope and the bishops united with him—to set the rules for Catholic worship: “…no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.” (SC, § 22, 3)

The only significant liturgical change mandated by Vatican II was the replacement of the 1962 Order of Mass (commonly known as the “Tridentine” Mass) with the Novus Ordo as the Ordinary Form of the liturgy in the Roman Rite. However, this was not a radical liturgical revolution as it is often perceived. The traditional Latin Mass and the Latin Novus Ordo are much closer akin than many people realize. Much of the Latin text of the Tridentine Mass was retained verbatim in the Novus Ordo. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, Vatican II did not scrap the traditional Latin Mass altogether. Acknowledging its important place in the Latin Rite liturgical tradition, the Council retained the Latin Mass of 1962 as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite liturgy, giving bishops the authority to allow its occasional celebration in their dioceses. Unfortunately, very few bishops have granted permission for this since the Council.

Roman Missal 3.0

When many of us first heard that a new English translation of the liturgy was being prepared, the news brought some angst. We’re used to the way Mass has been said in the Latin Rite our whole lives, and we’d like it to stay that way. Change is unwelcome. Fortunately, our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI understands the challenge as well as the opportunity that the new Mass text poses for English-speaking Catholics. “Many will find it hard to adjust to unfamiliar texts after nearly forty years of continuous use of the previous translation,” His Holiness remarked to members of Vox Clara in April 2010. Because of this, he added, “The change will need to be introduced with due sensitivity.”

But, some Catholics object, why can’t the Church retain the familiar English Mass translation it has been using since Vatican II? This objection indicates a narrow and distorted vision of the Church’s liturgy based on a mere few decades of experiencing the Latin Rite Mass exclusively in English. The answer to it is that the translation we’re used to was intended by the Church to be part of the period of careful experimentation following the Council. The Council’s Instruction Comme le Prevoit stated: “Above all, after sufficient experimentation and passage of time, all translations will need review.” The Instruction did not say that some translations might need review, but that all translations would. This clearly indicates that the new liturgical translations following Vatican II were not meant to be carved in stone, but to be eventually reviewed and revised.

The foundational text for the Novus Ordo Mass in the Latin Rite from which all vernacular liturgical texts are translated is the Missale Romanum (Roman Missal) issued in Latin by the Holy See. This contains both the Ordinary of the Mass (the unchangeable parts of the liturgy) and Propers for Mass (parts of the liturgy such as Scripture readings and certain prayers that change from day to day and season to season). Three editions of the Missale Romanum have been promulgated since Vatican II—one in 1969, one in 1975 and one in 2000. There have been very few changes to the Latin text of the Ordinary of the Mass through these three editions. Their main features have been additions to the Ordinary and the Propers and changes in some of the Proper prayers, with most of the additions and changes to the Propers resulting from revisions in the liturgical calendar. In this tradition, the Third Edition of the Roman Missal adds several new Prefaces for Eucharistic Prayers to the Ordinary, as well as new Votive Masses and prayers for the feasts of new saints to the Propers. Most of the differences we’ll be noticing in the English words of the Ordinary of the Mass on November 27, 2011 will stem from changes in translation based on the new principle of formal equivalence, not from changes in the Latin text of the Missale Romanum.

Many Latin Rite Catholics today lack familiarity with the original Latin words of the Mass. As a result, they are comparing, analyzing, and judging the old and new English Mass translations based solely on their perceived merits and demerits in the vernacular. This is unfortunate, because being cut off from the mother language of the liturgy presents a barrier to the proper understanding of any vernacular Mass text that comes from it. The true standard by which a vernacular Mass translation may be judged is its fidelity to the Latin text of the Missale Romanum. That text deserves considerable respect because it contains the accumulated riches of 2,000 years of Catholic liturgical tradition.

The new English translation of the Roman Missal includes a Mass text that is much more faithful to the original Latin than the 1974 and 1985 English Mass texts. For example, the first sentence of the Gloria in the Missale Romanum reads, “Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.” The new English translation of this passage reads: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.” This is a precise, word-for-word rendering of the Latin text. By contrast, the previous translations read: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.” This rendering deleted the words “bonae voluntatis,” “good will,” and replaced “people of good will” with the more ambiguous term “his people,” thus losing some of the meaning of the original text. Another example is the first word of the Creed in the Missale Romanum, “Credo,” which literally means “I believe” and is rendered this way in the new translation. The outgoing translation reads “We believe,” diluting the significance of the Creed as a solemn statement of faith pronounced by each individual believer. Another part of the Creed that in the Missale Romanum reads “consubstantialem Patris” is accurately rendered “consubstantial with the Father” in the new translation. The same text appears in the outgoing version as “one in being with the Father,” which is similar in meaning but not as accurate a translation of the original Latin. The new Mass text also includes a literal translation of the traditional Latin response, “Et cum spiritu tuo”—“And with your spirit.” The previous translation, “And also with you,” is a paraphrase that has no precedent in our liturgical tradition. A fifth example of the fidelity of the new Mass text to the Missale Romanum is the prayer of priest and people before Communion, which reads in Latin: “Domine, non sum dignus ut inters sub tectum meum: sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea.” The new translation is a faithful rendering of that text: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” The 1985 translation, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed,” changes some of the literal Scriptural text of this passage and dilutes some of its meaning.

Besides fidelity to the Latin, the new English Mass text has many other positive qualities that reflect its linguistic origin. One of these is a more formal and reverent tone that is better suited to divine worship. This is evident in a passage from the first Eucharistic Prayer, which in the outgoing translation reads: “Look with favor on these offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchizedech.” Here is the same passage in the new translation: “Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them, as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedech, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.” This example also makes clear that intelligibility, good taste and beauty have not been sacrificed to accuracy in the new translation. Although traditional and dignified, there is nothing archaic or arcane about it. It is not a turning back of the liturgical clock to before Vatican II as some contend. There is no “Holy Ghost” or “thee” or “thou” to be found in it. The words of the new English liturgical text are simple and modern, yet they join together to form a beautiful, poetic rhythm reflecting the rhythm of the Latin and suited to the great prayer of the Church.

And even if we cannot fully grasp the reason for the wording of any part of the new Mass text, we ought to trust our Holy Mother the Church regarding it and accept it in a spirit of humble obedience to her. The new English translation of Mass is not the hasty work of one bishop or one translator, but the product of many thousands of hours of intense labor by all the English-speaking bishops of the world working together in careful collaboration under the direction of the Holy See. These prelates deserve recognition and hearty gratitude for providing English-speaking Catholics of the Latin Rite with a new and sound translation of the Sacred Liturgy that grows organically from their liturgical tradition while also fulfilling the aims of the Second Vatican Council.

Naturally, it will take some time for priests and laity alike to adjust to the words and phrases of the new Mass translation. The burden of adjustment will fall on our priests, since there are many more changes in the words of the priest than in the words of the people. In fact, a majority of the changes in the English Mass text occur in the four Eucharistic Prayers, where nearly every sentence has been reworded to better match the original Latin. Yet through all the changes in words of priest and people, the familiar prayers of the Novus Ordo Mass are still recognizable, and the basic form of the liturgy remains unchanged.

Catechesis, Catechesis, Catechesis

Widespread failure to correctly understand and implement the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council has produced a decades-long liturgical crisis in the Catholic Church, leaving the true aims of the Council fathers largely unrealized to date. However, during this dark and turbulent period for the Church, scattered glimmers of light have reflected the Council’s true vision for liturgical renewal. Two of these have been the Adoremus Society and Ignatius Press, both founded by Father Joseph Fessio, a Jesuit priest who studied for the priesthood under Cardinal Ratzinger in the 1970s. A close friend of our current pontiff, Father Fessio is deeply familiar with his traditional Catholic vision of the liturgy, and has conveyed that vision for many years in publications such as the Adoremus Bulletin, the Adoremus Hymnal and numerous books by Ratzinger, especially The Spirit of the Liturgy. These materials have helped familiarize American Catholics with the true spirit of Vatican II regarding the liturgy.

Another bright glimmer of light in the darkness of the post-Vatican II era has been the daily celebration of Mass in the tiny chapel of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery founded by Mother Angelica in Irondale, Alabama. Here, as in few other places in America, the celebration of the Novus Ordo liturgy has consistently followed the terms of Sacrosanctum concilium: certain parts of the Mass are always said or sung in Latin; Gregorian chant is a mainstay of the liturgical music; and missals are available to help people follow along with the Latin parts of the Ordinary. Different priests vary in their use of Latin and English in the liturgy, offering a good example of the flexibility that Cardinal Arinze referred to. Like the Benedictine monasteries of the European Dark Ages, Our Lady of the Angels has helped preserve the rich liturgical tradition of the Latin Rite and the true spirit of Vatican II through difficult times for the Church in the United States. Not only has it done that, but through daily broadcast of the Mass on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), it has communicated that tradition and that spirit to millions of Catholics across the United States, providing invaluable catechesis and promoting liturgical renewal in fidelity to the Second Vatican Council.

The implementation of the Missale Romanum, Third Edition, presents an excellent opportunity to correct the widespread misperceptions regarding the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. However, this educational opportunity must be seized and taken proper advantage of, not allowed to slide by. Pope Benedict underlined the importance of this in his April 2010 address to members of Vox Clara when he stated that “the opportunity for catechesis that it [the new Roman Missal] presents will need to be firmly grasped.”

Education is the key to understanding. Without proper catechesis, English-speaking Catholics of the Latin Rite will not correctly understand the reasons for the changes or appreciate the new translation. This catechesis should currently be going on in parishes across the United States to prepare parish staff and musicians for the new Roman Missal. However, the author is concerned that not enough is being done at the parish level to prepare the average Catholic in the pew for the changes in the Mass text. The extent of catechesis he has seen in his parish so far has been a brief mention in the bulletin of an invitation to a meeting being held at a neighboring parish to discuss the upcoming changes in the Roman Missal. This approach is simply not going to cut it for the millions of American Catholic laypeople who make up the lion’s share of the Church in the United States. These people shouldn’t have to go out of their way to learn about the new Roman Missal that will soon be taking effect. The catechesis should be brought to them on a platter when they come to church on Sunday. It should be served by the priest from the pulpit, on color inserts in the bulletin, in flyers in the pews, in the parish newsletter, and in pamphlets in the back of the church that people can take home with them. Catechesis about the new Mass translation must take the form of an all-out informational campaign based on the premise that all Catholics must be informed and prepared; otherwise, it will be ineffective, and the vast majority of Catholics in the United States will be unprepared for November 27, 2011.

All the same, there are many things that lay Catholics can and should do to educate themselves about the liturgical changes. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a special section of its website devoted to the new Roman Missal at usccb.org/romanmissal that gives basic information and includes, under “Sample Texts,” the full new text of the Order of Mass as well as side-by-side comparisons of the old and new Mass text for the people and the priests. Every Catholic with access to the Internet should take advantage of these resources and print them out for closer study and review in preparation for implementation. In addition, Catholics who lack knowledge of Latin should start getting familiar with it. Two excellent resources for this purpose are the Adoremus Hymnal, which includes the Order of Mass in Latin and English side by side, and Jubilate Deo, both available from Ignatius Press and through the EWTN Religious Catalogue. Every Catholic of the Latin Rite should at least know the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, the Pater Noster, and the Agnus Dei in Latin. For a better understanding of what the Mass is, Pope Benedict XVI’s little book The Spirit of the Liturgy offers a brilliant presentation of the theology of Catholic worship and the 2,000-year history of the Church’s liturgy. And finally, Catholics who have not yet done so should pore over Sacrosanctum concilium to soak up the true spirit of Vatican II and clarify their understanding of the Council’s liturgical reforms.

Yet even with proper catechesis, some Catholics will still object that changing the words of the liturgy now after forty years is a recipe for pastoral disaster, as it will cause people to leave the Church. This objection stems from all the misperceptions of the Second Vatican Council recounted in this article. Ironically, it is being made by those who are themselves predisposed to leave the Church because they disapprove of the changes. If some Catholics can’t live with the changes, that is their problem. For its own good, the Church must remain faithful to the true spirit of Vatican II, even if that means alienating some people. When the Vatican approved the new Roman Missal translation in July 2010, Cardinal Francis George, then president of the USCCB, admitted that some people will not like it but that in the end, “it will be the text the Church uses for prayer.” The implementation of the new Roman Missal will be a litmus test of fidelity to the Church. It will separate the wheat from the chaff—true, faithful members of Christ’s Mystical Body from parasites who hitch onto it for their own comfort and convenience. This pruning process will render the Church slightly leaner but stronger and healthier, in line with Pope Benedict XVI’s vision for the “new springtime” of the Church originally predicted by John Paul II.

The Dawn of Real Liturgical Renewal

A major priority of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI has been correct implementation of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, especially the reform of the Sacred Liturgy. The Third Edition of the Missale Romanum and the Instruction for its translation, Liturgiam Authenticam, were both issued during John Paul’s pontificate. Liturgiam Authenticam marked the close of a four-decade period of experimentation with liturgical translations authorized by the Second Vatican Council, while the Third Edition of the Roman Missal represents a consolidation and integration of the Council’s liturgical reforms into the Church’s Latin Rite tradition. This project of correct implementation of Vatican II has been carried on with vigor by Pope Benedict XVI, who sees the proper understanding and faithful celebration of Catholic worship and liturgy as the key to renewal of the Church and effective evangelization.

In 2007, Pope Benedict took the bold step of issuing a universal indult that allowed the occasional celebration of Mass in the Extraordinary Form in any diocese of the Latin Rite without the necessity of obtaining the local bishop’s permission. This move may have been somewhat controversial at the time, but it was a stroke of genius. Pope Benedict recognized that lack of Catholic exposure to the traditional Latin Mass was impeding the authentic liturgical renewal envisioned by the Second Vatican Council. The pre-Vatican II Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo of Vatican II are not strangers to each other, nor was one ever intended to be radically different from the other. By giving modern Latin Rite Catholics the opportunity to experience the traditional Latin Mass, it allows them to reconnect with their liturgical (as well as religious and cultural) tradition and can help them better understand how the Novus Ordo Mass fits into that tradition.

Furthermore, a major theme running through the pontificates of John Paul and Benedict has been the prediction of a “new springtime” for the Church in the third millennium, particularly based on a revival of interest in Catholicism among young people. Both Popes have understood that there’s an important connection between the implementation of Vatican II and this theme of a new springtime for the Church: Renewal of the liturgy will lead to renewal of the Church from within. But what will the new springtime look like?

In an interview with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN in 2003, then-Cardinal Ratzinger opined that the new springtime would not be characterized by mass conversions to Catholicism all over the world. Rather, he said, it would consist of small, “convinced communities” of believers, especially young people, who would celebrate the liturgy together and witness the joy of their Christian faith to the modern society around them. That joyful witness of faith would be the primary method of evangelization, attracting other people to the Church and leading to a renewal of society as well.

This hope-filled yet realistic vision of the new springtime for the Church resembles not so much a flood of sunlight as an ever-growing number of lighted candles in the darkness. It has a particularly Benedictine flavor, and is part of the reason why our current Holy Father took the name Benedict. He did this to honor Saint Benedict, whose little monasteries scattered throughout Europe preserved Catholic faith and culture during the Dark Ages. The Church today confronts a certain kind of “dark ages,” as it is surrounded by the manifold evils of modern Western society and culture. In the Eucharistic liturgy, the heart of the Church’s life, the burning light of Christ can set each small, faithful, “convinced community” of believers ablaze, empowering them to spread the light of Christ to others.

A tantalizing glimpse of Pope Benedict’s vision for the new springtime can be seen in the hunger for liturgical tradition among Catholic young people. In dozens of places across the United States where Mass is now occasionally celebrated in Latin in the Extraordinary Form, the churches are packed with Catholics in their twenties and thirties. These small, “convinced communities” of young believers, with their devotion to truth, enthusiasm for Catholic tradition, respect for authority and commitment to fidelity to the Church, are already helping to make the Second Vatican Council’s vision for liturgical renewal a reality.

As the inauguration of the English translation of the Missale Romanum, Third Edition approaches, we are standing on the threshold of an exciting and historic moment for the Roman Catholic Church. The dark and difficult period of the post-Vatican II era is vanishing, and the dawn of real liturgical renewal as envisioned by Vatican II is upon us. In April 2010, Pope Benedict XVI expressed to Vox Clara his hope that the new Roman Missal will serve “as a springboard for a renewal and a deepening of Eucharistic devotion all over the English-speaking world.” With the realization of this hope, the new Mass translation will play a vital role in the new springtime for the Church. Its theological riches will help priests and people alike enter more deeply into the mystery of the Eucharist, the source, center and summit of the Church’s life. Its prayers will elevate Catholic worship and inspire and enrich our personal prayer lives. Along with a rediscovery of our rich liturgical and cultural heritage in the Latin Rite tradition, this renewal of the Sacred Liturgy will stimulate a new flowering of Catholic culture and enable the light of Christ to more brightly illuminate the world of the twenty-first century.


Copyright © 2011 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Attention: "FOCA-by-Stealth" At Work

Yesterday I received the following press release from the Catholic League via email that merits much wider attention:

HEALTH CARE BILL:
FREEDOM OF CHOICE ACT BY OTHER MEANS?

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the proposed health care legislation favored by the Obama administration:

On July 17, 2007, President Obama told his pro-abortion fans at Planned Parenthood that “the first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA).” Two years later, FOCA has yet to be reintroduced. But there are no signs that Planned Parenthood is disappointed, and that’s because Obama is delivering FOCA by stealth.

The principal reason why FOCA was not reintroduced was due to opposition from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Under the tutelage of Francis Cardinal George, head of the USCCB, and Justin Cardinal Rigali, head of the pro-life committee of the USCCB, the bishops made it clear that they would fight tooth and nail any attempt to get FOCA signed into law. Obama got the word, as did the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Jerry Nadler and Sen. Barbara Boxer. But that didn’t derail the pro-abortion forces from trying some back door maneuvering.

The USCCB believes, as does the Obama administration, that health care is a human right. The health care bills that have been served up by supporters of Obama, however, have provisions that mirror the most draconian elements found in FOCA. To be specific, in the past week, an amendment by Sen. Mike Enzi explicitly denying abortion coverage was defeated. When Sen. Orrin Hatch asked Sen. Barbara Mikulski if she would clarify her amendment so that abortion services would not be mandated, she said no; the amendment passed.

In other words, stealth politics is at work. No, FOCA is not on the table, but central provisions of it have made their way into the health care reform bills. What is most disturbing about all of this is that the public is being hoodwinked: most have no idea of the games that are being played. All the more reason why a national discussion on this issue needs to begin immediately.

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First of all, thank you to our bishops for their moral strength and fortitude in courageously defending the right to life of the unborn.

I would like to add to this, that another principal reason why the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) has not been reintroduced in the U.S. Congress is due to overwhelming opposition from the American people! As of this writing, more than 700,000 people have signed the Fight FOCA Petition (at www.fightfoca.com), a project of Americans United for Life (AUL). Why? Because Americans do not want all restrictions on abortion nationwide removed. They do not want abortions to be carried out by non-physicians (which would be extremely dangerous for women!) They do not want religious hospitals and health care facilities to be forced to kill unborn babies against their belief (doesn't sound like any freedom of choice there). And they do not want Big Government using their hard-earned taxpayer dollars to pay for other people's abortions, with the economy going down the tubes to boot.

As a result of this opposition to their bill, FOCA advocates have reverted to a more subtle strategy which AUL dubs "FOCA-by-Stealth." This involves slipping key provisions of FOCA into Congressional bills that deal with health care reform, such as the one mentioned above. If this bill passes Congress and gets signed into law by the president, every family in the United States would have access to free abortions paid for under the law by American taxpayers through Washington, D.C. I don't think Bill Donohue was exaggerating when he referred to this measure as draconian.

If this bill makes you unhappy, then this post has served its purpose. The more Americans become aware of FOCA-by-Stealth, the easier it will be to defeat. I will continue to expose FOCA-by-Stealth in future posts as the occasion arises.